EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Serhant Predicts Fascinating Affordability Shift in Homebuying for 2026—as He Lifts the Lid on His Own Resolutions

Celebrity broker Ryan Serhant has made a career out of keeping his finger on the pulse of the housing market—and now he's revealing his expert predictions for what 2026 has in store for prospective homebuyers.

As an original cast member of Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York,” Serhant, 41, is most notably one of the first real estate agents to have successfully leveraged reality TV fame to boost his business, kicking off his on-screen stardom just four years after he got his start in 2008.

More recently, he’s become a proud early adopter of artificial intelligence at his 5-year-old brokerage, SERHANT., in an ongoing quest to improve its bottom line and overall efficiency.

Now, the trailblazing “Owning Manhattan” star is openly sharing his latest visions for the future, revealing to Realtor.com® his top predictions for the housing market—and himself—in 2026.

After a tumultuous 2025, during which the housing market was significantly impacted by economic uncertainty, President Trump's tariffs, and three consecutive interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, Serhant expects the next 12 months to see an impressive uptick in the number of homebuyers coming off the sidelines and into active purchasing.

However, those homebuyers might look very different, according to Serhant, who predicts a surge in the number of group ownerships in 2026 as people look for more creative affordability solutions.

What's more, he expects more sellers to come to the table, although not for the reasons you might think.

Interestingly, while the real estate expert forecasts “some mild interest rate relief,” he doesn’t think that will be the “significant” factor in motivating homeowners to give up the historically low rates they locked in during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, he believes unquantifiable lifestyle factors will drive more sellers to finally come to market in 2026.

“I believe we're going to probably see a minimum of 10% more home sales, which is significant,” says Serhant. 

“That would mean an additional 400,000 plus [or] minus home sales next year than we've seen over the past three years, and it wouldn't be because of rates,” he adds. “It would be because you can only push people not to move for so long.”

Those sellers who may soon be looking to move might notice a new phenomenon Serhant reports is starting to take hold among buyers: Instead of the buyer pool being mostly populated by individuals and couples, the Netflix personality thinks a growing number of potential buyers will enter into group homeownership situations.

“What you're starting to see is not a new normal, but a pivot to the future of home ownership,” posits Serhant, suggesting that there are multiple scenarios in which these owner groups could emerge.

“I think you're going to start to see a lot more co-owners than we've seen before,” he explains. “Instead of just parents buying for children, it’s parents buying with children. Instead of just friends helping friends out, it’s friends buying with friends. It's cousins buying with cousins. It's different forms of tenants in common and LLC ownership that we just haven't ever seen before to make housing affordable.” 

Serhant concedes this shift will take some getting used to, but argues the trend makes sense dollar for dollar.

“Instead of living with three roommates in a rental and just burning your cash, why not go buy something, [the] three of you, if there's a good deal to be had?” he suggests. “I think people are becoming more comfortable with that.” 

For his part, Serhant has become more comfortable as of late being founder and CEO of his billion-dollar empire. 

Throughout Season 2 of “Owning Manhattan,” which dropped on Dec. 5, the Netflix personality is reliably outspoken about going on the offense to challenge competitors as he pursues his goal of making SERHANT. the top brokerage in the world.

To achieve that status, Serhant dishes that he’s keeping an eye on “deal volume” first and foremost.

“It's just size at that point,” he postulates. “Like, there are massive, massive firms that are heavily financed or have been around for 20, 50 years, right? So to be one of the big ones, you have to be one of the big ones.”

Beyond increasing the number of and size of transactions done by his New York-based brokerage, Serhant is also expanding by opening offices in additional markets and recruiting top-rated personnel to fill them.

“We have brought in some of the absolute top agents in every single market we've gone into,” he states. “Since Season 1, we've gone from one state to 14 states. We've quadrupled the size of the business since Season 1 of this show.”

One of Serhant’s most famous new agents is “The Bachelorette” alum Tyler Cameron, who joined the brokerage’s Jupiter, FL, outpost in July 2025. Following his time on the popular dating show and his own home makeover series, “Going Home With Tyler Cameron,” the 32-year-old reality TV personality is giving real estate a go. 

Five months since hiring Cameron, Serhant sees a lot of potential in the rookie agent who he says is building upon the strong foundation he came into the industry with.

“Tyler's in it now,” says Serhant. “He's a new agent. He has a big following. But just like everybody, the following only gets you so far. You have to put in the work and he's doing that right now. It's really, really cool and fun to see, and I think he's absolutely going to crush it.”

The Florida market is ripe for Cameron’s picking, according to Serhant. He believes the Sunshine State has become a prime destination for buyers looking to leave locales that have raised taxes in recent years, and will become even more popular as other states make it more expensive for some residents to stay put.

“There's legislators in California who are proposing a billionaires tax,” explains Serhant. “Whether it goes through or not, if you're gonna penalize prosperity and penalize success, there are other companies to go work for, meaning every state is a company, right? 

“If you rise to the ranks of being a C-suite at your company and then the CEO says, ‘Hey, thanks so much for working so hard for 20 years to make it into the C-suite. Give me something.’ You're like, ‘I’ve been working this whole time, like, that’s not how this works,’ and you're going to say, ‘There's other places to go. There's other companies to go to.’ 

“There's a lot of states that don't get it to their detriment, and then to the benefit of states like Florida, Texas, and so on, and so we've seen migration.”

Recognizing and adapting to emerging trends as they unfold is a skill Serhant is exceptionally adept at, in both real estate and reality TV, where he is also observing a changing landscape.

“It used to be that if you wanted access to a $20 million home, you had to go and turn on a TV show,” he muses. “Now you don’t. You just look at your phone. You can invent your own penthouse using [OpenAI’s] Sora [app] if you want to.

“Social media has made all content a meritocracy,” he adds. “Like, if what you're watching on Netflix or Hulu or Bravo is not as good or entertaining or as engaging as what you're watching on Instagram or TikTok, you're just going to go to what's the most engaging.”

Shortly after its release, the sophomore season of “Owning Manhattan” proved its high engagement with audiences by landing on Netflix’s global top 10 list and ranking No. 3 in the streamer’s TV show category. Serhant credits the show’s success to the way it has distinguished itself from other series in the same genre.

“If you're really differentiating yourself and building something where real estate is kind of the background, but you're telling them a much bigger story, then that's entertaining and that's engaging,” he says. “I think if people are just trying to be famous because of real estate, those shows have all been canceled. I think that's why ‘Owning Manhattan’ has done so well.” 

While it would be easy to assume “Owning Manhattan” is a continuation down the path Serhant started on during his run on “Million Dollar Listing New York,” the CEO sees it more as a leap to a completely new trajectory where the stakes have never been higher.

“If you've been watching my stuff for a long time, you watched me go from being 26 as a Realtor® doing rentals in New York City in the first seasons of ‘Million Dollar Listing,’ and I built my real estate agent career on the back of Bravo,” he says. “It was an interesting experiment, and we became No. 1 in New York City by 2017 on the back of Bravo, but we still did do the work. 

“Now, I'm building the No. 1 real estate company on the back of Netflix, and we're only two seasons deep,” he adds. “People get to follow along as we build a company—very public, very vulnerable—in real time, and I've never really seen anyone do that before. I think that's kind of a cool thing about what we're doing. That excites me.”

Ever the innovator, Serhant is most excited by opportunity—and as the new year approaches with all its possibilities, the resolutions he’s made for himself seem to ensure a future that’s brighter than ever.

“I am surrounding myself with incredible people so that I can focus on the things that I am just great at and not on the things that I'm good at or OK at or bad at,” he shares.

“I’ve made a real effort this year to hire great people around me [and] install even stronger systems so that I can sell, I can brand, I can expand, I could be a husband, I could be a dad, and live a more full life.

“The first four years in a startup, which is what the last four years have been, are the worst. And so I’m looking forward to 2026.”